Babies are fast learners when it comes to language. New research reveals that they can distinguish speech sounds and understand the intentions of other speakers, before they've even learned how to talk. But how do you test a baby's skills? And what does this tell us about language and the mind? Linguist Daniel Midgley goes gaga on this episode of Talk the Talk.

A couple of recent studies seem to confirm what many fear: text abbreviations cause poor grammar and writing skills in tweens and teens. Are we on the verge of a new Dark Age? Will the Internet render us incapable of language? Well, not so fast. There's evidence that textspeak is actually beneficial to language, and that the fears are overblown. Linguist Daniel Midgley hoses down the panic on this episode of Talk the Talk.

Do you have trouble processing sentences? Blame your brain. New research shows that we don't evaluate every word when processing language‚ and this leads us into problems when confronted by 'semantic illusions'. Linguist Daniel Midgley reveals all on this episode of Talk the Talk.

Mother, father, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, and cousin. Our words for family relations are so familiar to us that it's hard to imagine them any other way. But other languages have some surprising ways of ordering their kinship terms, and they can tell us about our social structure and our minds. Linguist Daniel Midgley speaks with Dr Charles Kemp on this episode of Talk the Talk.

You've heard of Stonehenge, but have you heard of Manhattanhenge? Perhaps Carhenge would be more your style. Either way, all these henges give us a look at how words get created. How many words get made this way? More than you'd think. Linguist Daniel Midgley is back for this episode of Talk the Talk.

Computers are terrible at learning language. Would they be any better if they learned it like humans have to? A team of computer scientists has built a 'robot baby' that is interacting with people and learning to speak. Ground-breaking, or just creepy? Linguist Daniel Midgley babbles away on this episode of Talk the Talk.

It's official: 'bogan' has made it into the Oxford dictionary. It's language's highest bar to clear, and its inclusion means that by any definition, 'bogan' is truly a word. How do words get into the dictionary, anyway? And what do these words tell us about ourselves? Linguist Daniel Midgley brushes up on the lingo on this week's episode of Talk the Talk.

Apes don't have language, but they do gesture. They've even been observed using a special form of gesture with their young. Could it be primate baby-talk? What can we learn from our nearest relatives about how our language started? Linguist Daniel Midgley swings in for this episode of Talk the Talk.

Are there secrets in your search history? We sometimes submit search queries that we wouldn't admit to friends. And by looking at our searches, researchers can unearth things we'd rather keep hidden, including covert racism and sexual predilections. Linguist Daniel Midgley dishes the dirt on this episode of Talk the Talk.

Even with the huge vocabulary of English, we still haven't got all the words covered. Other languages have words that we don't have single-word equivalents for. Can they be mapped onto English? And why do we have gaps in our language? Linguist Daniel Midgley will translate the untranslatable on this episode of Talk the Talk.